Conversations with Laclau in an Historical-Materialist Dystopia

Report from the Rethinking Marxism Conference, October 26-28, 2006

The events depicted below are indeed true, and reproduced with the
greatest attention to accuracy as is humanly possible.

CONVERSATIONS WITH LACLAU: [Scene 1: Ernesto Laclau serendipitously
sits down at a table I am sharing with some Canadian Benjaminians.
Laclau's intent is obviously to talk to a Puerto Rican woman, Julia,
who befriended me earlier in the day after a brutal session on the
relevance of Foucault. I have had three beers on an empty stomach at
this point; Laclau enjoys big glasses of wine. Laclau strikes up a
conversation with me, since I am between him and Julia. Talk is
choppy because Laclau either does not understand English that well, or
he is hard of hearing; I did not ask him which one was the case.
Eventually, after a good, though intermittent conversation, I have to
ask him a favor.]

Oliver: Ernesto, I need to ask you a question.
Laclau: A what?
Oliver: A question.
Laclau: I'm sorry, I did not understand.
Oliver: A QUESTION, Ernesto, I NEED TO ASK YOU A QUESTION.
Laclau: Oh, a question! [smiles] Yes, yes.
Oliver: Ernesto, do you want to be part of a joke?
Laclau: A what?
Oliver: A JOKE, Ernesto, A JOKE.
Laclau: Oh, you have a joke. What is it? I like jokes.
Oliver: No, no. Would you like to be part of a joke.
Laclau: [blank face]
Oliver: Ernesto, do you need some more wine? You are looking a bit
empty there.
Laclau: In a little bit, in a little bit, my friend. What is your joke?
Oliver: Well, I do not have a joke, per se. I am asking if you want
to be part of a joke.
Laclau: Oh, you want me as a joke? What is it.
Oliver: Well, listen, in my department, there are people who have
adopted many of your terms and seemingly unconsciously use them--or
pretentiously use them, I do not know which--in any case, they use
your terms in their speech…
Laclau: In my speech? I am not following.
Oliver: No, no Ernesto. I am not talking about your speech. LISTEN TO
ME. There are some people in my department who use some of your
phrases in their speech. They have a sort of Laclauian syntax-i-con,
if you will.
Laclau: I'm sorry, I did not understand that last word.
Oliver: Nevermind, nevermind. It probably comes from Zizek.
Laclau: [laughs, because him and Zizek are not on good terms at the
moment] Oh, he likes words.
Oliver: Well, who doesn't, besides Marxists. [Laclau laughs] Anyhow,
people use your terms a lot, which is not even my point. My point is
that I'm asking you to be part of a joke.
Laclau: Okay.
Oliver: So, I was wondering if you would write the following down on a
piece of paper…
Laclau: You want me to write something? [suspicious look]
Oliver: Well, I'm not asking you to publish anything. Come on. I am
asking for a kind of autograph.
Laclau: [looks around, possibly for an escape route]
Oliver: [picks up on Laclau's anxiety] No, no. I'm not asking for an
autograph. Please Ernesto, I am an anarchist; I don't ask for
autographs. Don't let the scarf and hat fool you. I like your jacket
by the way.
Laclau: Thank you, its a London Fog.
Oliver: Oh! I have a camel hair London Fog, but it looks terrible on me.
Laclau: [gives an agreeable head-nod, as if he understands the
tragedies of clothing]
Oliver: No, seriously, I'm asking you to write the following joke
autograph. Just hear me out. Can you write the following for me:
[Laclau listens] "Dear UK geography department: I am articulating an
autograph, and you can take that chain of equivalence to the bank.
Ernesto Laclau" Can you write that?
Laclau: [chuckles] No, I will not do that.
Oliver: [stereotypical Chomsky gestures are now flailing about the
table] Are you serious? You will not write that down.
Laclau: No, I do not do such things. [laughing]
Oliver: [raised eyebrows] Wow, well I know who's not making my
Christmas list this year.
Laclau: [laughs] You are a character, my friend. [gets up to get some wine]
Oliver: Hey Ernesto, can you get me a beer while you are up?

[Scene 2: Later in the evening, Laclau and I, both obviously
uncharacteristically inebriated, are in an unmoving elevator together]

Laclau: Hey, what was [garble, garble]?
Oliver: Excuse me, I did not catch that.
Laclau: I said, what was your name again?
Oliver: Oh, Oliver.
Laclau: Yes, Oliver. Oliver, the elevator is not moving.
Oliver: Yes, I noticed. [looks at the floor button panel] Did you
press a button?
Laclau: No. I did not. I thought you did.
Oliver: No, I thought you did. You didn't press a button. Try
pressing something. Sometimes I fear touching things that could be
over-germed, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I use my scarf to
press buttons in the winter time.
Laclau: [Gives blank stare to Oliver; then laughs; presses 'ground
floor' button]
Oliver: [laughs, puts hand on Laclau's shoulder] Well, I guess that solves that.
Laclau: What? I did not understand.


CONFERENCE: I am not a Marxist. I have been saying this to many of
you for months now, but it is now apparent after two days at the
Rethinking Marxism conference in Amherst that I _really_ am not a
Marxist. Remember that scene from Brazil when the police open up the
ceiling of a family apartment on Christmas eve, and the family starts
screaming and frantically falling over themselves at the sight of the
police kidnapping the father of the family, thus ruining Christmas?
Well, it seems that I am (along with a couple of other younger
'post-Marxist/structuralists') the bad cop at this conference,
stealing Marx from pink old men who are frantically screaming and
falling over themselves at the sight of discourse and any theory
written after 1979.

This conference is an invasion of the tyrannical Old-Pink-White-Male
Brigade that also makes its appearance at SEEDAG and in the demography
sessions of the AAG, but with a strange twist: conversations are very
much concerned with whether one can actually have a commodity outside
of capitalist society; whether Mao is actually relevant or just
marginally relevant; whether the machines are going to kill us all,
and how should we prepare for them. All the while, we can
rhetorically assuring one another that we are definitely living in an
imperialist state that is merely resolving its contradictions of
capital overaccumulation in Iraq (which is, of course, partly true).
Capitalism is doomed, the socialized humanity of Marx will prevail.
Don't fuck it up by reading Deleuze and Guattari, you pomo panzy brat.
And what's up with your sheek glasses, and Euro-style? Are you
stylistically wearing a scarf and newsie hat even though it is 55
degrees outside? More importantly, is that a
@#$&^!#&*$*#!$^(*@#$@!%@#$%@&!@!@#&!%$*^@#$&^ IPOD?!?!? Next thing
you know, this Lyotardian (i.e., tea-cup Marxist) commodified chump
will be smoking a pipe to make a fashion statement.

The strata of C-M-C is ever present and the strictest of mottos here.
Flighty Benjaminians, misguided Foucauldians, and vulgar Hardt and
Negri readers should never forget the lessons of C-M-C. If you do not
know what C-M-C is, well, you are not working hard enough! I lucked
out by actually knowing C-M-C when it was thrown in my face (I knew
all that reading of Marx would come in handy) in my session on
sovereignty in Hardt and Negri. How it was relevant, I still do not
know.

But, in a strange twist of fate, I am an unwanted breed [how did this
happen?]. Marx, Marx, Marx… that is what we are supposed to be
concerned with. For example, I was at a session today where a woman
presented a very pleasant paper on Foucault and Marx. She was
concerned with the connection of genealogy and critical theory, and
she tried to argue that in later Foucault, one can see that Foucault
is 'going back to Marx,' by focusing on the 'arts of governing'
involved in political economy. The famous chapter on 'The Working
Day' in Capital represented, to this woman, a good example of a
Foucauldian analysis… which if one were to be nice, one could say that
this kind of reading of Marx is absurd—again if you are being nice.

So, I briefly comment on this paper with the simplest of critiques:
Marx is interested in sociological description, whereas Foucault is
interested in genealogical techniques; two very different approaches
to social relations.; the gaze is not literally alert everywhere;
Foucault should not be conflated with critical theory. Without
getting into the particulars of the ensuing conversation (this was a
session on Foucault, Marx, and Benjamin), the woman eventually said
the following: "I'm fine with Foucault. But there are those people
out there who say 'We need LOTS of Foucault and very little Marx'
(obviously directing this statement to me, apparently the only
'Foucauldian' in the room), but I say 'no,' we need LOTS of Marx and
very little Foucault" [followed by a succession of ISO-esque
head-nodding from the crowd]. Genealogy is now historical
materialism. This, I believe, sums up well the conversations I have
had thus far at the conference. Please, do not ever call me a
Marxist again.

SYNOPSIS: Nevertheless, there have been some very, very good papers.
Some of the arguments, especially by the Benjaminians from the
University of Alberta, are admirably sophisticated. In fact, this
conference makes me think of geography as some what a tragic
discipline, since there are so many people (including myself) who want
to intimately work with particular theorists, but there is this
hegemony at work that forces us to always feel as if we have to
reference the keywords of geography whenever we are engaging in
analysis… to the behest, I think, of developing more sophisticated
analysis.

Even though most of the sessions here are discussing topics that I
feel to be absolutely irrelevant, this is conference that has a great
amount of potential, and should be taken over by poststructuralists of
all stripes. Especially those poststructuralists who are fine
dressers, and enjoy elitism and bourgeois taste (you know who you are,
don't be ashamed! Lauren and I just stocked up 8 lbs. worth of
gourmet cheeses for the winter!).

AMHERST FOOD: The Amherst micro-brewery here is awful, but the
northeastern version of BBC (Barefood Beer Company) has a very good
ESB and pale-ale. I have not at all been impressed with the food,
though there is a good coffee shop, Lou's Coffee shop, where one of
the employees sported a "Process over Product" arm tattoo. I also
want to give a shout out to Domino's Pizza, who drove me back to my
hotel the other night when I could not get a cab. I will never forget
that I delivered my first pizza to myself in Amherst, MA.

AMHERST 'LANDSCAPE': Le Corbusier and Van der Rogh utopia. Nothing
seems to have been built before or after 1969. I have counted ONE
brick building on the campus, THREE in town.

The Body Without Organs?

Is the tortured body a ‘body without organs?’ In a recent issue of the New Left Review (May/June 2006), Susan Willis wrote a stimulating article on the new ‘symbolic-economy’ of deriving intelligence from torture victims at Guantánamo Bay for the emerging security industry. According to Willis, detainees present a new, idiosyncratic form of labor control in order to produce intelligence. ‘Shackled to the floor,’ Willis reminds us, ‘the detainees are farmed for intelligence in much the same way that the pharmaceutical industry “pharms” animals for the production of drugs, or even organs for eventual human transplant (2006: 124).’ Intelligence, Willis suggests

that is extracted from the Guantánamo prisoners is not a commodity like a kidney on the global organ market. Rather, it is cycled into the various agencies and institutions which produce security both in a material sense, along with infrastructures of personnel and weaponry, and as an ideology that suffuses our daily discourse. The CIA, FGI, NSA, Pentagon and other agencies compete for access to intelligence as capitalist enterprises compete for other sorts of raw materials. The American public consumes security ideology much as it consumes 24-hour cable news. The levels of this security are closely monitored and its hourly fluctuations gauged in terms of how they affect stock-market portfolios. The suffering and mental breakdown of the tortured detainees is traded against the wellbeing of Middle America: they must stay there in order to preserve the peace and prosperity of the citizenry. Security has become America’s daily vitamin supplement (2006: 125).

In this sense, Marx would argue, intelligence, ‘the inner—indeed, most intimate—resource’ (2006: 126) can be understood as formally subsumed into the relations of capital; that is, processes and resources that originate outside of capitalism’s domain (in this case, utterances that are physically beaten out of tortured prisoners) are incorporated into its relations of production. This derived intelligence is then materially circulated, accumulated, and consumed not only by members of the intelligence community and security industry, but by a consuming American public. But, Willis misunderstands the brilliance behind her discovery: the detainees are not the labor that is controlled. Rather, those that are in the act of extracting intelligence, the torturers themselves, are the disciplined and controlled labor in this relation of production. The intelligence officers/torturers farm and produce the intelligence-commodity that is then extracted by their respective institutions and marketed for circulation.

Which brings us backs to our original question: is the tortured victim a ‘body without organs?’ Can that wretch that is shackled, tormented and beaten to a pulp on a concrete floor be understood as a deterritorialized, full-bodied inversion of the despotic body? In other words, in our sinister torture complex, does the torture victim not code the very flows of desire that are brought against him, which is the basic premise of the socius and the ‘body without organs?’ In his devastating discussion of the political foundation of ‘naked life’ and the ‘state of exception,’ Giorgio Agamben argues with clarity the following point:

‘At the two extreme limits of the order, the sovereign and homo sacer present two symmetrical figures that have the same structure and are correlative: the sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially hominess sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns (1998: 85; my emphasis).’

How then can we account for this material inversion of the despotic-sovereign, the tortured ‘body without organs?’

Deleuze and Guattari speak briefly of torture and pain, a fact of life in the primitive territorial machine. Following Nietzsche, D & G outline a ‘theater of cruelty’ that is based on an economy of credit/debt, whereby the primitive bodies become the surface of the corporeal inscription of the socius (190). Since the voice and ‘graphic action’ (writing, monumentation, etc.) are mutually exclusive in the primitive territorial machine, the primitive body becomes indebted to and serves as an inscribed equilibrium between the socius-earth and voice of the primitives (191). However, this discussion of torture becomes irrelevant to us once the despotic body comes from without, and the independence of the voice and graphism are collapsed.

A unique dynamic occurs when the barbarian despot comes from without: even though the despotic machine confronts the primitive lateral alliances and extended filiations with a new incestual alliance and direct filiation, the primitive disposition does not disappear. Rather, the despot overcodes those alliances and filiations of the territorial machine. But what is the consequence of this Romanesque overcoding/marginal preservation (connective synthesis) of the conquered? Here we see another correlation between Agamben and D & G. ‘Man must constitute himself,’ D & G write, ‘through the repression of the intense germinal influx, the great biocosmic memory that threatens to deluge every attempt at collectivity (190).’ In turn, Agamben famously tells his readers: ‘once brought back to his proper place beyond both penal law and sacrifice, homo sacer presents the originary figure of life taken into the sovereign ban and preserves the memory of the originary exclusion through which the political dimension was first constituted (1998: 83; my emphasis).’ Here, the tortured primitive body that can be killed but not sacrificed (since it is in debted to and inseparable from the socius-earth) is preserved as a memory in the despotic machine, just as homo sacer is preserved in the juridico-political dimension of society.

In both Homo Sacer and Anti-Oedipus, the sovereign-despot is operative on the limits of society, detached from the chain of signification: he is a deterritorialized full body. This brings us back to the importance of the conflation of the voice and graphism. Unlike the territorial machine, graphism ‘aligns itself on the voice’ and becomes writing/law, or the representation of the despot (205), or rather, the despot becomes the ‘master signifier’ within and without the law (206).

This graphism of the master-signifier is still at work today. In the case of Guantanamo, who are the perverts who ‘spread the despot’s invention, broadcast his fame, and impose his power (193)?’ How do these perverts employ the master signifier in the practice of torture? More importantly, how does the torture victim become a ‘body without organs’ that is symmetrical figure of the despot? In light of D & G and Agamben, we must look at how the torture victim is an extractable entity. Following D & G’s use of Lyotard’s theory of pure designation, the torture victim is, through words, ‘transformed into a sign the things and bodies they designate (204);’ i.e., the torture victim is graphically inscribed by the necessary despotic voice in order to become legible to the torturer, since the inscription necessarily must refer back to the master signifier (infinite debt). In the ‘realm’ of pop-culture, we can see how this perversion is reproduced in contemporary social relations—consider a sample dialogue from Pulp Fiction where the hit-man Jules confronts the petty-thief Cookie in the diner:

Jules: Cookie, tell me something. Do you read the bible?
Cookie: Not regularly.
Jules: Well, there's this passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never gave much thought what it meant. I just thought it was some cold-blooded shit to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass (my emphasis).

Jules is acting and speaking through the master-signifier, though not the anachronistic master-signifier of God (since God has been appropriated by the governmentalized State, just as the primitive territorial machine was appropriated by the despotic machine), but through the governmentalized master-signifer of ‘cool’ violence. In the documentation on practices of torture, this acting in the name of ‘cool’ violence is the more than pervasive.

But something special happens in the torture complex. The interaction between the tortured victim and the torturer(s) is never one of intimate familiarity, where the victim is merely inscribed. The tortured victim is approached as an object, an object that, along with the master signifier, constitutes the constellation of knowledges that are employed against it. The torture victim is merely experimental earth: something that can be farmed, something that can be inscribed, something that is not understood to be a body, or rather, a body that is meaningless. In the eye-pain of the torturers, it is a resource for intelligence extraction, an inverted body without organs that codes the decoded knowledge that is circulated in the decoded flows of the intelligence community, security industry, and the general public matrix. This is how the torture victim becomes an object of desire, and has a hand in producing a desiring-machine. When those decoded constellated knowledges employed by torturers approach the coding torture victim, and through their sinister encounter in that malevolent place of Guantanamo, ‘and [in] their conjunction in space that takes time, [these] decoded flows constitute a desire—a desire that, instead of just dreaming or lacking it, actually produces a desiring-machine that is at the same time social and technical (224).’

Of course, these decoded flows are not one-sided. They escape the imperial machine, and become privatized within the social field. While the tortured body without organs codes a certain kind of intelligence that is circulated within the intelligence community and American media realm, another type of coding can unexpectedly occur, becoming manifest in other undesirable desiring-machines. Willis concludes her article by citing the figure of Mackandal in Alejo Carpentier’s El Reino de Este Mundo. Mackandal is the leader of pre-revolutionary rebellions in Santo Domingo. ‘Captured and condemned to be burned at the stake,’ Willis writes, ‘Mackandal’s auto de fé is witnessed by plantation owners and slaves alike. The former sees the body consumed in the fire; the latter see body and flames metamorphose into a butterfly. Neither martyr, nor sacrificial victim, Mackandal instead becomes myth (2006: 135).’ Myth, which ‘always expresses a passage and a divergence’ (D & G 219), is always residual and consumed, and in the case of Guantanamo, constitutive of the immanent desiring-production that will create revolutionary butterflies of us all.